Howzat for a fine new Vintage Ale

The launch of the latest Fuller’s Vintage Ale is one of the great beer moments of the year. Beer lovers await the new vintage with all the pent-up excitement of wine drinkers anticipating the annual offering from Bordeaux.

But unlike the wine, made from the same grape varieties every year, each Vintage is brewed using different malts and hops. As a result, each new version of the beer offers fresh aromas and flavours to enjoy.

Over the years Fuller’s brewers have used a range of malting barleys that include Golden Promise from Scotland – popular with whisky distillers – Maris Otter and Optic. Hops have included such traditional English varieties as Fuggles, Goldings, Challenger, Northdown and Target along with the powerful citrus notes of American varieties.

Vintage has become so popular that 50,000 bottles a year are produced. They come in attractive claret boxes and each bottle is numbered.

It began in a small way. In 1997 the then head brewer, Reg Drury, took a portion of a bottled beer called Golden Promise, a filtered and pasteurised barley wine with a redoubtable strength of 8.5 per cent. Reg used the same mash but he conditioned it in the brewery for a month following fermentation. He then filtered the beer and re-seeded it with fresh yeast. While the beer can be drunk young it will continue to age and improve over many years.

In 2004 I enjoyed a tasting of Vintage Ale at the brewery in the company of renowned wine writer Oz Clarke who enjoys the juice of the barley as well as the grape. We both revelled in the complexity and diversity of aromas and flavours in the beer. We found fresh tobacco, citrus fruits – orange in particular – liquorice, marzipan, vanilla, peppers and spices.

On another occasion I sat down with Reg Drury’s successor John Keeling and we tasted samples of every Vintage brewed to date. It was remarkable to note the way in which early samples of the beer had become more complex with greater malt richness balanced by peppery and spicy hops along with ripe fruit. The fruit note was especially strong on orange that is a characteristic of Fuller’s house yeast strain.

The standout beers for me were the 2002 and 2003 versions. 2002 was brewed with Golden Promise malt and a single Golding hops and it had a pronounced orange fruit and peppery hops character. In sharp contrast, 2003 was brewed with Optic malt and three hops – Challenger, Northdown and Target. It was paler in colour with richer malt balanced by tart hop resins on the nose and big hop bitterness in the finish, with notes of orange and cherry fruit.

When Young’s Brewery closed in 2006, John Keeling invited veteran brewer Derek Prentice to produce that year’s Vintage Ale. True to his past, Derek made a beer with a simple but tried and trusted recipe he brought from Wandsworth of Maris Otter pale malt and Fuggles and Goldings hops. It was not only a splendid version of Vintage but also paid homage to a great brewery on the other side of the Thames.

Fuller’s is based in Chiswick with origins dating back to the 17^th century. In 1845 the brewery was bought by members of the Fuller, Smith and Turner families and it remained in their ownership until 2019 when the brewery – not the pubs – was sold to the giant Japanese company Asahi for a mighty £250 million.

Fears were voiced that the beer range would change and that London Pride, the main beer, would become Tokyo Pride. But the range is largely intact and even minority and expensive beers to produce, such as Gale’s Prize Old Ale and Vintage Ale, have been maintained.

The years hurry by. John Keeling has now retired and Vintage Ale is in the hands of his successor, Guy Stewart. His 2006 interpretation (8.4%) goes a long way from the simple early recipe of pale malt and English hops.

The malt recipe is made up of 95 per cent pale malt, 3.5 per cent crystal and 1.5 per cent Cara Gold, plus invert sugar to boost fermentation. Crystal and Cara are stewed malts that give colour to the beer and a toffee/butterscotch flavour.

The hops are English Jester and American Dolcita that combine to give citrus, stone fruit and peach notes to the beer. Fuller’s orange yeast note is also evident: you can’t keep a good yeast strain down!

The beer has a flaming bronze colour and a heavy collar of foam. Orange, peach and berries explode on the nose followed by a massive hit of ripe fruit on the palate balanced by spicy hops and biscuit malt. The finish is long and bittersweet, balancing fruit, hops and malt notes.

It was launched in the ancestral home of cricket, Lord’s in St John’s Wood. Howzat for a great beer!

Vintage Ale 2006 is on sale in selected branches of Waitrose at £8.50 a bottle or from Fuller’s online shop: www.fullersbrewery.co.uk.

It’s worth buying two bottles, one to consume now and one to lay down and left to age.

•The former Young’s Ram Brewery in Wandsworth is now home to Duncan Sambrook’s Brewery.

First published in What's Brewing September 2026.